The White House on Tuesday said it had its own intelligence that Hamas was using Gaza's largest hospital Al Shifa to run its military operations, and probably to store weapons, saying those actions constituted a war crime.
How do you suggest they take out Hamas otherwise? Just saying so doesn’t solve the problem that simultaneously forces Palistinians under leadership they did not vote for and ensures future and sustained terror attacks directed against the civilian population of Israel as they’ve experienced the last 17 years.
Inaction is not a viable option anymore. Urban fighting favors the defender so sending in light infantry is suicide. Sending in light infantry supported by indirect fire is less suicide but worse for the civilians because it is slower and ensures the city is destroyed block by block a la Aleppo or Mosul.
I’m getting really tired of these reactionary responses by people who have never had to plan urban combat before. Literally every army on earth would do the same as Israel right now and it is overall legal.
How about they take meaningful action legitimize Palestinian existence within Israel, end the apartheid and work out a plan for restitution? That would evaporate any shreds of support for Hamas nearly overnight and make it significantly easier to locate, and bring the terrorists to justice. Oh, and they could try to not actively promote and fund Hamas. That method would also have the side benefit of a lot fewer dead babies.
I agree on many points but it’s also important to consider that 18% of Israel’s population is Palistinian. If Palistinian statehood is the goal, apartheid implies that they should be fully integrated. I don’t see either side ever fully accepting a minority solution. Inability to come to a full agreement on this situation is the issue. There’s a lot more nuisance in terms of resources and access that definitely lean more to the Palistinian narrative but most of the responses and perverse incentives center around violence.
If Israel attempts to work with Palistinians, they inherently have to work with their government as it is not an occupation. Any funding or humanitarian aid for Palestine is funding for Hamas until they are fully removed. I think the Israel’s agree with you on this one.
Soldiers should risk their lives to save children.
Or if that’s too much to ask, maybe negotiate? Try to talk with the people they’ve been blockading since 2007. See how they can make gaza less of a shithole so the people there have better things to do than lash out at the people who keep them there.
The way you’ve used them in this comment chain absolutely gives off smug “I’m smarter than you vibes” regardless of what you tell yourself to avoid self reflection.
Just figured you should know in case you wonder why the people around you find you so exhausting and insufferable. Have a good one. :-)
It’ll cost lives and they won’t succeed. They’ll fall back on indirect fire talking out entire buildings but now unable to be more selective.
Negotiating was what they were doing and it seemed to be working. All they were doing was use the time to build up resources for their massive terror attack. Prior to 2007 they were on the way to peace and then Hamas was elected.
There is literally no other option to remove Hamas. Prior to the current weapon set armies would simply level the city. That is so very much worse and also legal.
All they were doing was use the time to build up resources for their massive terror attack. Prior to 2007 they were on the way to peace and then Hamas was elected.
This is bullshit. First, Hamas was elected in 2006, not 2007. And second, the blockade started in 2005, not in 2007. There’s more, but yeah this is bullshit.
Yes, Israel and Egypt set up borders after they left the occupation of Gaza as they moved towards sovereignty. That’s how international borders work. It’s not an apartheid state unless you don’t defacto recognize Palistinian independence if not statehood.
The Israeli side won’t say as much because they don’t want to legitimate Hamas but it really is that simple to me.
Gaza has never been sovereign. After 2005 the occupation continued in the form of the Gaza blockade. We’re not talking just borders here; the blockade extends to the air and sea (Gaza has its own coast on the Mediterranean).
Even when you do the right thing, it only matters if people know you did it truth or no truth. I’m over trusting that doing the right thing matters anymore in my life. It never did because disinformers will always take advantage of your silence and delay in telling the whole story.
Ever notice how quick Hamas is to have a narrative concerning events and Israel waits until they have evidence and simply provides a policy narrative otherwise? This is how trust is gained.
There’s a disconnect between inevitable military reality and many people’s views of the situation which I don’t understand.
Hamas has to be embedded among the civilian population of Gaza or Israel would have already destroyed them with bombs and artillery. The rockets that Hamas has are purely a terror weapon and they would be completely ineffective in an artillery duel.
Israel has to use bombs and artillery anyway because, as you say, attacking light infantry would be torn apart against an entrenched enemy in an urban environment. Urban warfare always involves large numbers of civilians dead no matter who is fighting whom.
Israel must seek to minimize civilian casualties (and Hamas must not) because unless Iran and Hezbollah decide to get involved after all, the only way this war ends without the destruction of Hamas is if international pressure forces Israel to stop fighting. In this context, the narrative that Israel’s policy is to deliberately target civilians isn’t just false but nonsensical - such a policy would be the most direct way for them to lose the war!
In this context, the narrative that Israel’s policy is to deliberately target civilians isn’t just false but nonsensical - such a policy would be the most direct way for them to lose the war!
Yet they’re doing it anyway. There are many examples, but the most egregious has to be literally killing civilians using sniper fire in Al-Shifa hospital and using white phosphorus.
Ah yes because bombing thousands of innocent civilians has ALWAYS worked to make the opposing force more secure. It totally has not radicalized even more people and brought about more terrorists.
We have zero evidence of more terrorists being created and an ideology growing stronger from the US fucking about and indiscriminately bombing half the Middle East.
Why would this take Hamas out? Can ideas be murdered by dropping bombs on babies? Last time I checked the Nazis got destroyed. Are you telling me Nazis don’t exist anymore?
Hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians were killed by American bombs during WW2, and now Nazis don’t exist anymore as a political or military power. Germany is a liberal democracy and a firm ally of the USA. The same is true about Japan.
More recent efforts at occupation and nation-building in the Middle East have not worked as well, but they have also involved much, much less indiscriminate bombing. Israel is going to face a very difficult challenge once they successfully occupy Gaza and the time comes to build it up into a neighbor that will not be a threat to Israeli security. I don’t know what they’ll need to do in order to succeed, but although I recognize that radicalization is a real phenomenon, I still think the claim that inflicting civilian casualties during war dooms them to failure is not strongly supported by historical precedent.
Hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians were killed by American bombs during WW2, and now Nazis don’t exist anymore as a political or military power. Germany is a liberal democracy and a firm ally of the USA. The same is true about Japan.
That’s because of post-war reconstruction of those countries. Like hell Israel intends to reconstruct anything in Gaza except Israeli settlements.
I recognize that radicalization is a real phenomenon, I still think the claim that inflicting civilian casualties during war dooms them to failure is not strongly supported by historical precedent.
It does depending on the number of casualties. People with grudges tend to want vengeance, which is how you get more Hamas.
The USA rebuilt West Germany but the Soviet Union subjugated East Germany. In both cases the Germans didn’t resist - their will to fight had been broken. Note that I’m not saying that Gaza will be or ought to be treated the way Germany was, just that a society’s reaction to occupation is complicated and the prediction that casualties lead to vengeance is not always correct.
I guess that’s true, but taking other examples like Vietnam, Iraq, North Ireland and Afghanistan, which are all closer to what Israel is doing, definitely led to vengeance. I guess it’s the difference between a proper fight, if you get what I mean, and just getting bombed/shot/whatever by a random guy you did nothing to.
Do the Nazis have a power structure anymore? I actually agree with you that the justifications are similar to the Allied coalition against fascism. Go take a look at how many civilians died in that conflict.
Gaza has not been occupied for over 15 years. Please get informed. This is not counter insurgency.
White phosphorous is used for illumination and obscuration and Israel is not signatory to the conventions banning its use wholesale. Nor is Russia or the United States. Offensive use is considered illegal to use in densely populated areas but so far there is only evidence for the offensive use in less dense areas to my knowledge.
Proving intent on deliberately leading civilians to bombing targets is going to be a high bar. Israel urged civilians to go south to avoid the heavy combat operations entering Gaza City. That doesn’t mean they are not going to strike targets in the south and pointing in that general vicinity and shouting “SEE” does not mean they deliberately misled civilians. Their goal is to minimize civilian casualties. They will be taking both the north and the south before the end. That still requires shaping operations as Hamas is moving supplies through that area and still occupies it.
Again, literally every army on earth would do this. Some wouldn’t even warn civilians to move like we saw with Russia in Ukraine.
Gaza has not been occupied for over 15 years. Please get informed. This is not counter insurgency.
Okay, explain why almost all human rights NGOs (including the UN) say that Gaza is still occupied. This is a counter insurgency.
Proving intent on deliberately leading civilians to bombing targets is going to be a high bar. Israel urged civilians to go south to avoid the heavy combat operations entering Gaza City
That’s not what I’m talking about. There have been multiple incidents of Israel saying “go to this location to avoid being bombed” then bombing the location they specified. And they did the same with escape routes they specified for Gazans. I can provide links.
They do it a lot before bombing specific targets. It used to be the norm for them, but in this ethnic cleansing war they dropped it as a policy. Like “we’ll bomb the area, go to XX square to avoid being bombed”. They also announced “safe” routes for fleeing to the south so people don’t get bombed, then bombed them.
I’m tired of arguing without a source. I’m still waiting on literally anyone to provide the source for when the IDF cited specific locations to go other than south.
Let me put this in perspective for you, if there was a school with an armed gunman holding a bunch of children captive, do you think the best course of action is to bomb the entire school?
You minimize civilian casualties as much as possible while still ensuring that it has a military purpose to the best of your ability. Beyond the use of specific weapons which causes unnecessary suffering with no military purpose, there is no specific limit. We may not like it but this is war. It comes with the territory because there is no other choice.
What Israel is doing is not leveling entire cities. Look at Allepo or Mosul. Israel is far more targeted but they get blamed every time a building collapses because there was an unsafe tunnel under it.
Israel is systemically eliminating underground tunnels, enemy concentrations, and command structures prior to entering the city when they can clear buildings individually and dismantle the command structure.
They are at war so yes. The bed to take the city and they need to take the tunnels out to take the city. This is not a new problem in war. These aren’t insurance they are dealing with. Israel does not occupy the ground yet.
My perception is that negotiation with hostage takers only encourages them to take more hostages. I’m not smart on this so don’t take my word for it.
So in other words, whatever the number of dead innocents is which might give you pause (and you aren’t sure such a number even exists) it’s definitely more than are being killed currently.
The goal is to achieve victory while minimizing civilian casualties. Any strategy that prioritizes minimizing civilian casualties over achieving victory inevitably leads to defeat because the enemy can choose to put arbitrarily many civilians at risk. In other words, if there’s some particular number of dead innocents that would give you pause, all the enemy has to do is strap that many innocents to their soldiers, and the enemy has both the ability and the willingness to do that.
So any number is OK as long as the guys giving the orders say it’s necessary for victory and give lip service to trying to avoid it. Thank you for confirming.
for this and many other reasons we need autonomous robots with machine guns/grenade launchers/weapons platforms. those boston dynamics robots or something very similar. flood the streets with them - no boots on the ground, no worries. it’s more granular than saturation bombing & platoons of killer robots just sounds badass!
I agree that it could bring about less civilian casualties but I’m mixed on the public perception. Air strikes are impersonal enough when it comes to winning the narrative and they save an order of magnitude more civilian lives in the end. A fully robotic army would turn a lot of folks against you while maybe saving more civilian and military lives. If all war is an extension of politics, perceptions are what win. The perception of who remain anyways.
What if they bomb you first? Is violence justified in response to violence?
My opinion is that pacifist opinions on violence should be held at the start of conflict and go no further when it comes to the ethics of force progression. It’s just an opinion but don’t expect too much support for your opinion when you are flatly against all war regardless of justification. Hitler loved folks like you.
Ironically, the rocket attacks are not inherently a war crime in the context of the current conflict. It is debatable if they serve a military purpose but literally nobody is focusing on that right now. They are focusing on the blatant attack on over a thousand civilians of multiple nationalities in a face to face fashion and taking of civilian hostages. That is the justification for the current conflict. Prior to that, the conflict was largely contained in spite of the constant and indiscriminate rocket attacks with no military purpose.
Israel left the occupation and Hamas was shortly thereafter elected despite significantly improving living and political conditions. How perverse these incentives and narratives are.
That is the justification for the current conflict. Prior to that, the conflict was largely contained in spite of the constant and indiscriminate rocket attacks with no military purpose.
The conflict was “contained” in the sense that Israelis typically weren’t getting killed. It was not contained in any meaningful way for Palestinians. This is an article where an expert talks about your particular misunderstanding of the conflict.
TLDR: Israeli aggression has been a persistent reality in Gaza for the past 18 years, and that in and of itself is violent. Hamas and Gazans didn’t respond to peace with violence; the status quo they find themselves in is itself violent.
Israel left the occupation and Hamas was shortly thereafter elected despite significantly improving living and political conditions. How perverse these incentives and narratives are.
You mean when Israel started blockading Gaza (which started in 2005, not 2007), killing its economy, and withheld PA taxes for more than a year?
You’ve certainly provided the single most biased source on this topic consistently from the past twenty years. Do you get all your news from there or just this conflict?
You mean the opposite, right? If so then yeah the fact that Egypt is cooperating with Israel’s blockade is beyond disgusting. That said, I’m not sure how it’s relevant when we’re talking about Israel.
So? Don’t bomb babies. This isn’t hard
How do you suggest they take out Hamas otherwise? Just saying so doesn’t solve the problem that simultaneously forces Palistinians under leadership they did not vote for and ensures future and sustained terror attacks directed against the civilian population of Israel as they’ve experienced the last 17 years.
Inaction is not a viable option anymore. Urban fighting favors the defender so sending in light infantry is suicide. Sending in light infantry supported by indirect fire is less suicide but worse for the civilians because it is slower and ensures the city is destroyed block by block a la Aleppo or Mosul.
I’m getting really tired of these reactionary responses by people who have never had to plan urban combat before. Literally every army on earth would do the same as Israel right now and it is overall legal.
How about they take meaningful action legitimize Palestinian existence within Israel, end the apartheid and work out a plan for restitution? That would evaporate any shreds of support for Hamas nearly overnight and make it significantly easier to locate, and bring the terrorists to justice. Oh, and they could try to not actively promote and fund Hamas. That method would also have the side benefit of a lot fewer dead babies.
I agree on many points but it’s also important to consider that 18% of Israel’s population is Palistinian. If Palistinian statehood is the goal, apartheid implies that they should be fully integrated. I don’t see either side ever fully accepting a minority solution. Inability to come to a full agreement on this situation is the issue. There’s a lot more nuisance in terms of resources and access that definitely lean more to the Palistinian narrative but most of the responses and perverse incentives center around violence.
If Israel attempts to work with Palistinians, they inherently have to work with their government as it is not an occupation. Any funding or humanitarian aid for Palestine is funding for Hamas until they are fully removed. I think the Israel’s agree with you on this one.
Boots on the ground.
Soldiers should risk their lives to save children.
Or if that’s too much to ask, maybe negotiate? Try to talk with the people they’ve been blockading since 2007. See how they can make gaza less of a shithole so the people there have better things to do than lash out at the people who keep them there.
It’ll cost money, but Israel has plenty.
why are they blockading them? :o
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
ooh, because of the terrorists! :3
It’s a little more complicated than that. If you’re interested in learning, here you go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel_(1948–present)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare
1948 to present? heeey now! where’s the ottomans and before that? :3
I mean, you wanted to know.
History is complicated. There’s not really a point where it ‘resets’ and everything that came before is null and void. Lol.
If you’re interested in studying the Ottoman’s, here you go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire
You can just search for what you want to learn about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/
The emoticons come across as smug and disingenuous just so you know. It gives “I already decided what’s true you stupid idiot” vibes.
i use them because they are cute! (✿◠‿◠)
if you’re offended. Too bad. (≖_≖ )
Not offended.
The way you’ve used them in this comment chain absolutely gives off smug “I’m smarter than you vibes” regardless of what you tell yourself to avoid self reflection.
Just figured you should know in case you wonder why the people around you find you so exhausting and insufferable. Have a good one. :-)
It’ll cost lives and they won’t succeed. They’ll fall back on indirect fire talking out entire buildings but now unable to be more selective.
Negotiating was what they were doing and it seemed to be working. All they were doing was use the time to build up resources for their massive terror attack. Prior to 2007 they were on the way to peace and then Hamas was elected.
There is literally no other option to remove Hamas. Prior to the current weapon set armies would simply level the city. That is so very much worse and also legal.
This is bullshit. First, Hamas was elected in 2006, not 2007. And second, the blockade started in 2005, not in 2007. There’s more, but yeah this is bullshit.
Yes, Israel and Egypt set up borders after they left the occupation of Gaza as they moved towards sovereignty. That’s how international borders work. It’s not an apartheid state unless you don’t defacto recognize Palistinian independence if not statehood.
The Israeli side won’t say as much because they don’t want to legitimate Hamas but it really is that simple to me.
Gaza has never been sovereign. After 2005 the occupation continued in the form of the Gaza blockade. We’re not talking just borders here; the blockade extends to the air and sea (Gaza has its own coast on the Mediterranean).
I’ll take “it was legal at the time” for 1000, Alex
Legal, ethical, and moral within the laws and context of armed conflict, both in the moment and as policy.
Nobody ever thinks that they’re the bad guy. Any damn fool can cook up a justification to themselves for doing the wrong thing.
“You just don’t understand, this time it’s different” -every single time.
Even when you do the right thing, it only matters if people know you did it truth or no truth. I’m over trusting that doing the right thing matters anymore in my life. It never did because disinformers will always take advantage of your silence and delay in telling the whole story.
Ever notice how quick Hamas is to have a narrative concerning events and Israel waits until they have evidence and simply provides a policy narrative otherwise? This is how trust is gained.
Idk Israel is pretty quick to blame Hamas when they snipe journalists.
There’s a disconnect between inevitable military reality and many people’s views of the situation which I don’t understand.
Hamas has to be embedded among the civilian population of Gaza or Israel would have already destroyed them with bombs and artillery. The rockets that Hamas has are purely a terror weapon and they would be completely ineffective in an artillery duel.
Israel has to use bombs and artillery anyway because, as you say, attacking light infantry would be torn apart against an entrenched enemy in an urban environment. Urban warfare always involves large numbers of civilians dead no matter who is fighting whom.
Israel must seek to minimize civilian casualties (and Hamas must not) because unless Iran and Hezbollah decide to get involved after all, the only way this war ends without the destruction of Hamas is if international pressure forces Israel to stop fighting. In this context, the narrative that Israel’s policy is to deliberately target civilians isn’t just false but nonsensical - such a policy would be the most direct way for them to lose the war!
Yet they’re doing it anyway. There are many examples, but the most egregious has to be literally killing civilians using sniper fire in Al-Shifa hospital and using white phosphorus.
You write your Internet comments better than I write my memos.
Ah yes because bombing thousands of innocent civilians has ALWAYS worked to make the opposing force more secure. It totally has not radicalized even more people and brought about more terrorists.
We have zero evidence of more terrorists being created and an ideology growing stronger from the US fucking about and indiscriminately bombing half the Middle East.
Why would this take Hamas out? Can ideas be murdered by dropping bombs on babies? Last time I checked the Nazis got destroyed. Are you telling me Nazis don’t exist anymore?
Hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians were killed by American bombs during WW2, and now Nazis don’t exist anymore as a political or military power. Germany is a liberal democracy and a firm ally of the USA. The same is true about Japan.
More recent efforts at occupation and nation-building in the Middle East have not worked as well, but they have also involved much, much less indiscriminate bombing. Israel is going to face a very difficult challenge once they successfully occupy Gaza and the time comes to build it up into a neighbor that will not be a threat to Israeli security. I don’t know what they’ll need to do in order to succeed, but although I recognize that radicalization is a real phenomenon, I still think the claim that inflicting civilian casualties during war dooms them to failure is not strongly supported by historical precedent.
That’s because of post-war reconstruction of those countries. Like hell Israel intends to reconstruct anything in Gaza except Israeli settlements.
It does depending on the number of casualties. People with grudges tend to want vengeance, which is how you get more Hamas.
The USA rebuilt West Germany but the Soviet Union subjugated East Germany. In both cases the Germans didn’t resist - their will to fight had been broken. Note that I’m not saying that Gaza will be or ought to be treated the way Germany was, just that a society’s reaction to occupation is complicated and the prediction that casualties lead to vengeance is not always correct.
I guess that’s true, but taking other examples like Vietnam, Iraq, North Ireland and Afghanistan, which are all closer to what Israel is doing, definitely led to vengeance. I guess it’s the difference between a proper fight, if you get what I mean, and just getting bombed/shot/whatever by a random guy you did nothing to.
Do the Nazis have a power structure anymore? I actually agree with you that the justifications are similar to the Allied coalition against fascism. Go take a look at how many civilians died in that conflict.
I just had a great idea. Let’s just make genocide legal!
By stopping their occupation of Gaza.
Then why did the UN condemn it as a war crime? And why are they using white phosphorus and deliberately leading civilians to bombing targets?
Gaza has not been occupied for over 15 years. Please get informed. This is not counter insurgency.
White phosphorous is used for illumination and obscuration and Israel is not signatory to the conventions banning its use wholesale. Nor is Russia or the United States. Offensive use is considered illegal to use in densely populated areas but so far there is only evidence for the offensive use in less dense areas to my knowledge.
Proving intent on deliberately leading civilians to bombing targets is going to be a high bar. Israel urged civilians to go south to avoid the heavy combat operations entering Gaza City. That doesn’t mean they are not going to strike targets in the south and pointing in that general vicinity and shouting “SEE” does not mean they deliberately misled civilians. Their goal is to minimize civilian casualties. They will be taking both the north and the south before the end. That still requires shaping operations as Hamas is moving supplies through that area and still occupies it.
Again, literally every army on earth would do this. Some wouldn’t even warn civilians to move like we saw with Russia in Ukraine.
Okay, explain why almost all human rights NGOs (including the UN) say that Gaza is still occupied. This is a counter insurgency.
That’s not what I’m talking about. There have been multiple incidents of Israel saying “go to this location to avoid being bombed” then bombing the location they specified. And they did the same with escape routes they specified for Gazans. I can provide links.
When did Israel provide a location that was anything more specific than the south?
They do it a lot before bombing specific targets. It used to be the norm for them, but in this
ethnic cleansingwar they dropped it as a policy. Like “we’ll bomb the area, go to XX square to avoid being bombed”. They also announced “safe” routes for fleeing to the south so people don’t get bombed, then bombed them.I’m tired of arguing without a source. I’m still waiting on literally anyone to provide the source for when the IDF cited specific locations to go other than south.
Oh you could’ve just said so at first. Here’s an example:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-area-bombed-after-warning-to-move
Let me put this in perspective for you, if there was a school with an armed gunman holding a bunch of children captive, do you think the best course of action is to bomb the entire school?
Your perspective is that of peacetime. There is an armed force preventing entry.
That’s an insane take
It’s literally a military take.
Clearly, which is fucked up
Every army on earth fuckin sucka my dick 🫡
Why did I read this with Shrek’s Scottish Accent?
Because it’s funnier that way
Sorry, which military were you thinking of?
All of em. Tryna get my hog sucked big time out here
KISS Army
What’s ur preferred child to terrorist ratio? 3:1? 5:1? Right now I think it’s 10:1 in Gaza.
You minimize civilian casualties as much as possible while still ensuring that it has a military purpose to the best of your ability. Beyond the use of specific weapons which causes unnecessary suffering with no military purpose, there is no specific limit. We may not like it but this is war. It comes with the territory because there is no other choice.
And how has the general bombardment of entire cities and evacuation routes minimized civilian casualties?
Heck, how has the IDF’s methodology even benefited their claimed attempts to wipe out Hamas?
What Israel is doing is not leveling entire cities. Look at Allepo or Mosul. Israel is far more targeted but they get blamed every time a building collapses because there was an unsafe tunnel under it.
Israel is systemically eliminating underground tunnels, enemy concentrations, and command structures prior to entering the city when they can clear buildings individually and dismantle the command structure.
So, they’re blowing up entire families supposedly on the claims of tunnels being below said homes.
Aren’t those tunnels the places where the majority of the hostages are being kept? So the IDF are actively trying to kill the hostages?
They are at war so yes. The bed to take the city and they need to take the tunnels out to take the city. This is not a new problem in war. These aren’t insurance they are dealing with. Israel does not occupy the ground yet.
My perception is that negotiation with hostage takers only encourages them to take more hostages. I’m not smart on this so don’t take my word for it.
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So in other words, whatever the number of dead innocents is which might give you pause (and you aren’t sure such a number even exists) it’s definitely more than are being killed currently.
Is that an accurate summary?
The goal is to achieve victory while minimizing civilian casualties. Any strategy that prioritizes minimizing civilian casualties over achieving victory inevitably leads to defeat because the enemy can choose to put arbitrarily many civilians at risk. In other words, if there’s some particular number of dead innocents that would give you pause, all the enemy has to do is strap that many innocents to their soldiers, and the enemy has both the ability and the willingness to do that.
So any number is OK as long as the guys giving the orders say it’s necessary for victory and give lip service to trying to avoid it. Thank you for confirming.
Nuke it all before Crimas. WWJD?
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I’m not 80 yet, so under qualified.
for this and many other reasons we need autonomous robots with machine guns/grenade launchers/weapons platforms. those boston dynamics robots or something very similar. flood the streets with them - no boots on the ground, no worries. it’s more granular than saturation bombing & platoons of killer robots just sounds badass!
I agree that it could bring about less civilian casualties but I’m mixed on the public perception. Air strikes are impersonal enough when it comes to winning the narrative and they save an order of magnitude more civilian lives in the end. A fully robotic army would turn a lot of folks against you while maybe saving more civilian and military lives. If all war is an extension of politics, perceptions are what win. The perception of who remain anyways.
Sure, mr commando that has planned 100 urban combat before.
Right, because nobody has ever studied military history. Surely there isn’t a college degree path centered around it or anything.
Ahh yes, military history, where people studied it and then come up with the best plan for urban warfare where the focus is to emphasise damage, not accuracy, collective punishing the people of Palestine, which lead to an even worst humanitarian crisis from the already bad one, then in a very convenient way lead to the order of evacuation or annihilate plan they’ve been itching to do for a long time. Yeah, that military history study. I heard flamethrower is good to make people surrender judging from the history from world war, maybe they should consider using it 🤔
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Hah, weak comeback.
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What if they bomb you first? Is violence justified in response to violence?
My opinion is that pacifist opinions on violence should be held at the start of conflict and go no further when it comes to the ethics of force progression. It’s just an opinion but don’t expect too much support for your opinion when you are flatly against all war regardless of justification. Hitler loved folks like you.
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Yes, which is why Israel is being bombed. Israel started the violence by its occupation of Palestine in 1967.
Ironically, the rocket attacks are not inherently a war crime in the context of the current conflict. It is debatable if they serve a military purpose but literally nobody is focusing on that right now. They are focusing on the blatant attack on over a thousand civilians of multiple nationalities in a face to face fashion and taking of civilian hostages. That is the justification for the current conflict. Prior to that, the conflict was largely contained in spite of the constant and indiscriminate rocket attacks with no military purpose.
Israel left the occupation and Hamas was shortly thereafter elected despite significantly improving living and political conditions. How perverse these incentives and narratives are.
The conflict was “contained” in the sense that Israelis typically weren’t getting killed. It was not contained in any meaningful way for Palestinians. This is an article where an expert talks about your particular misunderstanding of the conflict.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/shibley-telhami-israel-palestine-gaza-biden-netanyahu-hamas-settlements/
TLDR: Israeli aggression has been a persistent reality in Gaza for the past 18 years, and that in and of itself is violent. Hamas and Gazans didn’t respond to peace with violence; the status quo they find themselves in is itself violent.
You mean when Israel started blockading Gaza (which started in 2005, not 2007), killing its economy, and withheld PA taxes for more than a year?
You’ve certainly provided the single most biased source on this topic consistently from the past twenty years. Do you get all your news from there or just this conflict?
Maybe actually counter the points in the article?
hiiii! X3
why are you not including Gaza’s treatment of Egypt in any of this? :3
You mean the opposite, right? If so then yeah the fact that Egypt is cooperating with Israel’s blockade is beyond disgusting. That said, I’m not sure how it’s relevant when we’re talking about Israel.
ehehe~ that’s silly! where are those people gonna go? they can’t go to israel. they can only go to egypt!
but egypt isn’t too keen on more refugees. why’s that?
Even better idea.